


Teachable Fucking Moments (Lost in Fog Remix)

by Paul A (pedanther)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: (in case that wasn't obvious), M/M, POV Third Person, Present Tense, Swearing, but it wouldn't have been right without at least some, maybe not as much as the original, or as creative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 21:18:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15938492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pedanther/pseuds/Paul%20A
Summary: "Fucking hell," the man says. "It's you."





	Teachable Fucking Moments (Lost in Fog Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Philipa_Moss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philipa_Moss/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Teachable Fucking Moments](https://archiveofourown.org/works/471869) by [Philipa_Moss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philipa_Moss/pseuds/Philipa_Moss). 



The street is foggy and dark, except for fuzzy pools of light around each streetlamp where the fog glows but is no easier to see through. It gives the whole place a feeling of unreality, Eames thinks as he staggers along. Or perhaps that's the blood loss; there's enough blood soaked into his shirt that it's never going to be right again. He'd been quite fond of that shirt.

He doesn't remember who shot him, or how long ago, or why. There was a job, he thinks, and it went wrong. Security people closing in, and they'd had to run for it. Was that before or after they finished the job? Now that he thinks about it, he remembers stopping a few minutes ago to check his totem. He doesn't remember what the result had been.

A shape looms out of the fog. Eames' foggy brain doesn't recognise it as another human being until he's already walked into it. The young man reaches out to steady him, eyes going first to his blood-soaked shirt front and then to his face. His face seems to get the more dramatic reaction.

"Fucking hell," the man says. "It's you."

* * *

"I'm sorry," Eames says. "I've been trying to bring it to mind, but I don't seem to be able to remember your name."

The man looks up from where he's packing away the first aid kit. "Not surprised," he says. "I never said what it was, and you never asked. You might remember the face if you think back a few years. I didn't have the nose then."

The man's nose has been broken at some point, and didn't heal straight. Eames tries to picture the face younger, straighter of nose, while the man stashes the first aid kit under the sink. They're in the kitchen nook off a dark cavernous space that Eames thinks is some kind of auto repair workshop. He suspects that not all the business transacted here involves vehicles brought in by their rightful owners.

Wherever he knows this man from, it isn't on the sunlit law-abiding side of life. And it involved a car.

"I remember," he says eventually. "You were the young punk I had words with about your treatment of my Aston Martin."

"That's right," the man says. "And somewhere in the middle of scaring seven kinds of shit out of me, you gave me some fucking excellent advice about my life choices, so I feel like I owe you one."

"Did you follow the advice?" Eames asks, genuinely curious.

"Not a fucking word," the man says, producing a smile that matches his nose for crookedness. "That doesn't mean it wasn't good advice. If I _had_ followed it, I'd be in a better fucking place than I am now, I can tell you."

"I don't know, I kinda like it here," says Arthur.

"That proves nothing," Eames says. "I've seen you get comfortable in all kinds of ratholes." Then his brain catches up with his ears.

Arthur is standing by the sink and the kitchen nook's little collection of tea and coffee gear, stirring something that steams in a chipped mug. He carefully rinses and dries the teaspoon, then picks up the mug and salutes Eames with it before taking a cautious sip.

Eames blinks at him. "Arthur? When did you get here?"

Arthur smiles. It looks cheerful, but Eames knows him well enough by now to see the hidden tension. "I'm always here, Eames. I never left."

"Wish I'd known you were around," Eames says. "I could have used you on this job. Today was a complete shit-show until you turned up."

"There was a time when you would have made sure you knew exactly where I was."

"Times change, darling," Eames says. "I haven't known where you were since Geneva."

"That was the last place you saw me," says Arthur. "Not quite the same thing. I tried calling you in Morocco." He's very calm for a man with that much blood on his shirt. He's fussier about his shirts than Eames is, usually.

"Was that you?" Eames says, but he knows Arthur knows he'd known. That had been why he hadn't answered, of course.

"And then in Shanghai, I arrived to find that you'd just left." There's a small hole in Arthur's shirtfront, Eames notices. Just off the centreline of his body, not over to the left where most people think the heart is. A direct shot to the heart from someone who knew exactly where to aim.

The young man with the nose laughs. Eames frowns. He'd forgotten they had company; for a moment, there had been nobody in the room but him and Arthur.

"Do you remember what the advice you gave me was?" the young man asks.

"More or less," Eames concedes. Arthur, mercifully, is silent.

"Do you want it back? Practically new, never been used."

* * *

Arthur isn't sitting in the chair by the bed when Eames wakes up. Part of him had hoped, but of course things are well past that point now. For which, Eames finally admits, there is nobody he can blame more than himself.

Eames stares blankly up at the hotel ceiling while he calls himself every name he can think of. Then he lurches upright to check his totem. Then he slumps back and runs through the whole litany again.

He has a flight booked out of Heathrow later today; the ticket is on the bedside table, somewhere under the newspaper he'd made a half-hearted attempt to read before falling asleep. It's no use to him now; he'd picked the destination by carefully calculating where on the planet he was least likely to run into Arthur. He's going to have to run the whole calculation again backwards now.

_The only ones that matter,_ says the voice of memory, _are the ones that called you and when they couldn’t reach you they came to find you..._

Well, he's made it pretty fucking clear to Arthur that he doesn't want to be found, so if he's going to have any chance of fixing things he's going to have to find Arthur. What he's going to _say_ when he finds Arthur, he hasn't the faintest idea. One step at a time.

Step one: Stop staring at the ceiling and get a move on, you stupid prat.

Eames gets a move on.

**Author's Note:**

> "I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any fucking use to oneself."
> 
> \-- Lord Bleeding Goring, _An Ideal Fucking Husband_ by Oscar Sodding Wilde


End file.
